There are two ideas in computers lately that really have my attention. The first is cloud computing and the second is thin clients. I feel that both of these technologies have some really amazing capabilities for helping the environment and simplifying computers for end users. I would like to start a non-profit organisation that provides services for thin clients that connect to servers hosted in the cloud.
Why a non-profit?
I really enjoy my membership to the sdf public access unix system. I get to use a well maintained computer for a low price and be part of a community of like-minded individuals with similar interests. Sharing the resources with them means something, it’s hard to explain I guess, but I feel that I get a richer computing experience.
In addition to that warm and fuzzy feeling I get from that it’d also be important for this project to be a non-profit to keep this service at a low cost but provide the funding neccessary to maintain it. I’m not looking to make money, I’m looking to do some cool things with computers and make a difference for the environment.
Why Cloud Computing?
Using a cloud computer as the server to power the thin clients offers a greater amount of flexibility than using traditional infrastructure. I can spin up more instances as the demand grows and I do not have to invest a lot of money. Monthly donations from the users (I would like to have this around $10 a month) would easily pay for the machines, bandwidth, and storage required for the service. Cloud computing is also more environmentally friendly because we are sharing the physical computers with other users and centralizing power usage required for powering and cooling the machines.
We can also utilize advanced disaster recovery and backup services provided by cloud services.
Why Thin Clients?
Thin clients are great because they use very little power (I would use Sun Rays which use about 5 watts of power. The computer you are using to read this website now is probably using 60-300), have a very long life cycle (we’re talking 10 years here) so they won’t end up in the garbage, and contain no local storage or data so if something happens to the place where you are keeping your thin client your data is safe. Thin clients are also pretty cheap. A Sun Ray is around $400 and it is going to last for 10 years. This is a deal.
Summary of the Service
I understand that this is not for everyone. The thin clients will not be so great at heavy duty multimedia, etc. They also won’t be running Windows or OS X. They also require a reliable internet connection. They would be great for people that understand the benefits of having a managed, low power, reliable computer that is environmentally friendly and provides a decent computing experience that consists of web browsing, office applications, and unix utilities.
Because of a potential conflict of interest with my employer this will pretty much have to be only for home users. Here’s the service I want to provide:
- Each account with the system costs $10 a month.
- Each account gets access to the system, a smart card for logging in and around 10 GB of disk quota.
- Users must purchase their own Sun Ray (possibly through the nonprofit).
- While a user can have multiple Sun Rays, the same account cannot be logged in from more than one Sun Ray simultaneously.
- Users home directories will be backed up by snapshot once a week. The snapshots will be saved for one month.
- All software that is in the Ubuntu stable repository will be provided by request. There will be scheduled monthly service outages to install software or perform maintenance.
- An SLA will be defined that will result in service credits of the month to the users if there is an outage.
- There will need to be about 15 users per cloud instance to break even.
I suppose before I kick this off I need to test it to see if it’s doable. More thoughts as I get closer.